


born in an abundance of inherited sadness

by luciferinasundaysuit



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Character Study, Family Issues, Family Secrets, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Racism, Thanksgiving, a family gathering full of old people and all that implies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-24 09:26:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16637291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luciferinasundaysuit/pseuds/luciferinasundaysuit
Summary: The wall is cold against Buster’s shoulder where he’s been leaning against it. He’s been hiding in his cousin Charlie’s bathroom for almost ten minutes. Well, his mama’s cousin on her mama’s side. His first-cousin-once-removed. Close enough.





	born in an abundance of inherited sadness

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Jacksonville Skyline by Whiskeytown.
> 
> Thank you so much to Brooke, Lyssie, and Steph!

The wall is cold against Buster’s shoulder where he’s been leaning against it. He’s been hiding in his cousin Charlie’s bathroom for almost ten minutes. Well, his mama’s cousin on her mama’s side. His first-cousin-once-removed. Close enough.

Charlie’s house isn’t really big enough for Thanksgiving, but he’s the only one brave enough to have all the Campbells in his home. There are three bedrooms, but the living spaces are fairly small. Nobody can sit at the dining room table because they lay out the buffet there, so people wind up leaning against counters in the kitchen, eating on the desk in the office, and pressed shoulder to shoulder in the living room.

There are so many damn people in this house. Buster’s grandmama demands that all her children and grandchildren come, and so does her sister-in-law, his great-aunt Mary Walton. His other great-aunt by marriage, Aunt Daphne, lives in Atlanta with her second husband, so her kids split between the two places. 

His grandmama’s last living cousin, Jacob, always comes too, with his wife and their pain in the ass son and his two daughters, plus the younger one’s husband and son. Buster likes the girls. Anna Catherine and Ellen are nice, despite their parents’ general basketcase-ness. Jacob’s a piece of work too, but he’s 93 and was a POW, so Buster reckons he gets a little bit of a pass.

This year, Jacob’s prodigal son is here, dragged by his half-sister from Jacob’s first marriage. Buster’s met Nolan and Maggie maybe twice, but they seem less crazy than everyone else.

Charlie’s ex-wife, Kay, and her husband showed up so the kids didn’t have to pick between them. A few nephews from Kay’s side trailed behind them. They’re Kay and Charlie’s kids’ first cousins on Kay’s side. Her sister’s ex-husband is Jacob’s son, Alden, so they’re his kids’ cousins too. It’s as complicated as it sounds.

Altogether, there are roughly 70 people in this three bedroom house out in the middle of nowhere, counting the babies and new boyfriends and Aunt Mary Walton’s best friend and every stray yard cat in the vicinity. Buster knows most everybody, and he and Sam have spent a good part of the night whispering to Jess and Jack the names they’re supposed to know.

There’s football on the tv, Sam’s going to cut her pumpkin pie with pumpkin whipped cream in a few minutes, and all the kids sound like a herd of wildebeests playing up in the attic. Buster needs to stop hiding in the bathroom. 

He needs to go hug Laura, who he hasn’t seen in five years, and talk to Ann Clay and Little Cam and Rich, his favorite second-cousins who live in Chicago. He should talk to their mom, Georgia, too, ask her how the move to Kansas City had gone, and he really has to congratulate Little Charlie on the birth of Buster’s newest second-cousin-once-removed.

His first cousins, Lucy and Stephen Junior and Walker, are all there for the first time in three years. He needs to get them together in a group with Jess and Jack and Sam to take a picture for their grandmama. He ought to tell Lucy’s kids how big they’re getting.

Right now, though, he just can’t. It’s a Campbell family gathering, and he just. He needs a minute.

He’d been in the dining room, balancing a plate at the edge of sideboard. Supper was pretty good. Charlie and Anna Catherine’s husband, Burke, fried a turkey that was better than expected, and Mary Walton’s oldest son, Big Cam, brought a ham. Georgia made a sweet potato casserole that Buster was enjoying the hell out of, and he was just starting on his Aunt Olivia’s dressing when he saw Charlie’s sixteen year old grandson, Baby Cam, at the bar, pouring a Jack and Coke. Buster looked around for Cam’s mama, and sure enough, Emma could see. She just didn’t care. Buster swallowed hard, squeezed his eyes shut for a second. Once a Campbell starts drinking, they have two choices: quit or die slow.

Buster vacated the dining room, going to perch next to Sam on the arm of the couch in the living room, but Alden started talking about lowering the crime rate by bringing back public hangings, so Buster got up before he made a scene. 

Campbell family gatherings are about enduring, most of all.

In the kitchen, Jacob’s wife, Cora, asked if Buster was “still _friends_ with that Oriental boy,” and Buster had just about lost it. 

“Tim’s my boyfriend, and rugs are Oriental, not people,” he said in a tone he hoped passed for firm yet polite for what seemed like the ten thousandth time. He threw the remains of his supper in the trash and went into the office. 

He wants to yell every time that happens. Cora’s 87 years old, so he can’t.

In the office, Jess and Kay had been explaining to Kay’s husband, Henry, about Nolan, about why he never came home. 

“Jacob and Cora had a third son, Shannon. There was a car accident when they were teenagers. Nolan was driving. They blamed him. It was really fucking ugly, according to Mama and Aunt Olivia,” Jess said.

“Also, we think he’s gay,” Kay added.

Jess nodded. “That too. And a recovering alcoholic, but that’s probably because of the dead brother part.”

Henry cocked his head. “How many people in this family don’t drink _anymore_?"

Jess looked to Buster. Buster shrugged. 

“Nolan, Alden, Big Cam, Cam’s son Tripp, Mike and Lucas, who belong to Uncle Bobby and Aunt Daphne, Margaret, who’s Mama’s second cousin, Margaret’s daddy, David, and his twin brother, Edwin, though they're both dead now. Georgia doesn't, but she never really did.”

He doesn’t mention that Charlie and his youngest son, Daniel, need to quit. He doesn’t mention that he’s cut way back himself. He doesn't mention that he's concerned about Jack. He doesn’t mention their daddy, now eight years sober, or the problems on that side of the family.

“Damn,” Henry said.

Buster nodded. That was when he headed for the bathroom. Daniel’s son, Preston, was asleep in one bedroom, Little Charlie’s Willis was in another, and Charlie’s bedroom was off limits, so. Bathroom it was.

Taking a deep breath, Buster thought about all the things they didn’t talk about. Shannon’s death. The accident that had put his Uncle Till in a nursing home at the age of 26, or the fact that he had been high at the time, although the Tillmans didn’t wear quite so heavy a mask as the Campbells. How his grandmama’s brothers, Granger and Bobby, had both died of brain cancer. The fact that you can’t throw a rock at the family tree without hitting somebody medically classified as an alcoholic. That the men in his generation were the first not to have two or three marriages each. Daniel’s divorce. That Baby Cam was born out of wedlock. Charlie’s youngest child’s mama who wasn’t Kay. What happened to Jacob in Korea. Buster's grandmama's half-brother Charles that they rarely mention, and her half-sister Elaine that they _never_ mention. That his great-granddaddy was a mean son of a bitch who had an annulment, two divorces, and a history of violence to his name. C.A. had died before Buster was born. Buster hates him anyway.

Buster looks in the mirror. He sees his mama’s people looking back at him. Alden eyes, the Campbell nose. His smile is an Adler smile, from his grandmama’s mama. He has his daddy’s hair.

He turns around, reaches out to grab the doorknob. He can’t just stay here. He rests his hand there, bracing himself. He hears his mama and Aunt Olivia outside. “That school.” “That boy.” “Those people.” Great. They’re talking about him.

His mama blames him not being who he’s supposed to be on him going to liberal arts school, like Rhodes stole her boy and sent a changeling back to Georgia. She never wanted him to go there, but after he’d fucked up his leg, there wasn’t going to be any D1 baseball. He had looked at the best liberal arts schools in the South and picked one that would let him start. Rhodes did change him, but in good ways. Taught him things he already knew deep down, and some he didn’t. Gave him Tim. 

He was never supposed to be who he was. He was supposed to play baseball, marry a nice girl, have 2.5 kids, vote Republican, either make it to the show or come back home. He wasn’t supposed to be getting a PhD in sociology and living in D.C. with a biracial graphic designer who was very much a dude. The thing was, Buster never much liked who he was supposed to be. That guy was a dick. Which followed, considering his family.

Once the hallway sounds quiet, Buster opens the door and steps out cautiously. Nobody’s out there, which is a blessing. He makes a quick pass through the living room, lets his mama see him, squeezes his grandmama’s hand. His daddy is sitting in the corner staring resolutely at the tv. He doesn’t understand Buster, but even though he’s from a “good family” too, he’s never cared much for the Campbells’ airs. There was money, once. Except for what his grandmama hasn’t burned through since his granddaddy died, it’s long gone, and that was “new money,” earned by his granddaddy who “didn’t come from anything.” 

The Campbells haven’t come to terms with being firmly middle class, and it’s fucking exhausting.

They’re all going to choke on a combination of gossip, secrets, and multi-generational trauma one of these days. He thinks he remembers them being happy, but he can’t say for sure.

Buster sighs. He’s never, ever subjecting Tim to this. 

He makes the mistake of stopping to check the score of the ballgame, and he hears Lucas talking politics. Lucas is his blood, so Buster tries to love him, but he’s a full Campbell. The first rule of their bloodline is never go full Campbell. The second is that the best thing about being a Campbell is that you can’t marry one.

Buster makes eye contact with Ann Clay, and she rolls her eyes so hard he thinks she might hurt herself. He smiles, glad he’s not completely alone. She knows exactly who they are, like he does. Buster walks over and gives her a hug, reaches across Little Cam in the middle of the couch and ruffles Jack’s hair. 

“We’re all insane,” Little Cam whispers.

He’s 21, just realizing how fucked up they are, and he sounds nothing like the rest of them. Georgia got away as soon as she could, raised her kids up North.

“Yep,” Buster says.

He ruffles Cam’s hair too. Cam flicks him on the ear. Buster has Granger ears, or so his grandmama says.

“Rude,” Buster tells Cam, then turns around and heads to the back porch.

He grabs a jacket off the hook by the back door and pulls it on. He thinks it’s Daniel’s, but he’s not sure. He just knows there’s probably nobody out there, and it doesn’t quite count as cowering in a corner the way the bathroom does.

The porch is empty like he thought. It’s smaller than the big front porch where Charlie spends half the night chain-smoking Virginia Slims, just big enough to be a porch at all. There are two chairs. 

Buster sits down heavily, startling when his shoe clanks against something. He reaches down and comes up with a jar of clear. He shakes his head. Daniel had something somewhere, he’d known, but this isn’t exactly a hiding spot. He looks through the window into the office and sees an empty room.

With a shrug, he opens the jar. 

“Whoo,” he says as the smell hits his nostrils. That is _stout_.

He takes a swallow, wincing against the burn. He’s strangely pleased that it’s not that high-falutin’ flavored shit. If you’re not roughly 60% sure you’re going to die when it’s on its way down, is it even moonshine?

Buster looks out to his left and sees fields. He looks to his right and sees the shed where he knows there’s a deer hanging. He thinks about blood-soaked soil.

There’s a clatter from inside the house. Buster stands and looks through the window. From this angle, he can see into the living room. There’s a glass bowl on the floor, shrimp and vegetables are scattered everywhere, and Little Charlie and Daniel are in each other’s faces. Seems about right. Buster scrubs his hand over his face. He’s not sure why they’re like this, but he damn sure wishes he could fix it.

“Y’all better clean this shit up!” he hears Charlie yell.

Walker splits up the boys, and Stephen Junior and Tripp start cleaning up shrimp. Buster sits back down, glad they solved it without him for once. He’s sick of constantly being the adult supervision. The sense God gave this family wouldn’t fill a thimble.

Buster reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. No bars. He frowns and puts it back. He wishes he could talk to Tim, that he wasn’t out here at the ass end of nowhere celebrating Happy Genocide Day with his shithouse crazy relatives. He turns up the jar again, almost relishing the burn. 

“That’s enough, Posey,” he tells himself, twisting the lid back on the jar.

He knows who he is, who his people are. He knows what’ll happen if he sits out here in the dark with a jar of corn liquor, and he can’t let that happen. He can’t be that man.

Besides, he’s got to eat Sam’s pie, or she’ll kick his ass. He stands, squares his shoulders. He can do this. He’s a Campbell by blood if not by name, and Campbells are nothing if not stubborn.


End file.
